Rep.-elect Ilhan Omar (D-MN), the first Muslim woman elected to Congress (along with fellow Democrat Rashida Tlaib of Michigan), mocked Vice President Mike Pence last week with a tweet captioned “Jesus take the wheel!”.
The tweet was one of many mocking Pence’s apparent passivity during an Oval Office clash between President Donald Trump, incoming Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY). However, critics accused Omar of mocking Pence’s stalwart Christianity, and she offered no clarification.
Omar may not have been reflecting a religious prejudice of her own, but rather the generic prejudice against religious Christians that is common on the far left. However, she did have her defenders, including Ray Johnson of ChicagoNow.com:
Representative Omar tweeted out a photo of Vice President Pence sitting with his eyes closed with the caption, “Jesus Take The Wheel”. I thought that was really funny and the reason it was funny was that it was probably true! I don’t believe that Representative Omar meant anything anti-Christian about it and if I was sitting in there, I would have probably been thinking that same thing and praying that we can all take a deep breath and recognize the humor in the world and not take everything as a personal attack or that our fellow Americans are our enemies.
The phrase is used as an expression of exasperation, and is the title of a popular Carrie Underwood song.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. He is also the co-author of How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, which is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.